Two cities layout.

[Rail and Tie]

Very nice all the way around. Your extreme patience paid off on the sign and lettering. Wow that looks like a lot of work to get it right!

[Opa George]

Roger, I heartily agree with the comments on your sign--very impressive work, and the resulting sign is fantastic.
--George

[Dennis Bourey]

I can't believe the craftsmanship. it's awesome work. I love to try it.

[Random]

I managed too spend a fair bit of time in the workshop the last few days so I have several updates.

First up I finished the sign.  I added angled support beams and bracing then primed the back of the sign.





I then painted the framing a lighter color so that the letters would stand out.  Then the letters were painted with the same green as the building walls.




The result looks pretty good. 

[Random]

Next I turned to the diner. 

The roof had an unpleasant mating seem at the right so I decided to cover it with some black tissue paper to represent rolled roofing.  I cut the tissue into strips about 4 scale feet wide.  I then spread a thin layer of canopy glue over the roof and applied the paper with a small overhang on the each side which I rolled over the edge with my finger.   I also used my finger to smooth the paper so that it did not wrinkle too much.  Some texture was desired but the tissue can wrinkle unrealistically when wet if you let it.  Finally I applied some thinned canopy glue over the top and applied a strip of tissue down the middle to make a weather proof cap.

Once the roof dried I trimmed the ends with an xacto knife.




I painted the sides of the clearstory a medium gray and then mixed some darker gray to paint the roof on the sides of the clearstory.  I will probably go back and add paper to the sides once I attach the shed and blend the roofs together.

[GPdemayo]

The tool and die company is impressive.....well done Roger. 

[Random]

And lastly, I turned my attention back to the third brick building which will stand directly behind the station. 

To orient this building so that the main walls face the streets requires it be assembled differently than designed.  This is made a challenge by the beveled corner intended to join the two street facing stone clad walls. 

It has been a while since I worked on this one but fortunately I took a picture of my intended arrangement, complete with scrawled notes.  As you can see the beveled corners will end up on opposite corners.




In order to clean up the joints I needed to cut the bevel from one wall and add it to the other.  I chose to cut the beveled section away from the wider wall shown in the top left of the picture above and add it to the right side of the narrower wall at the lower right. 

I applied painters tape to the back of the wall to stabilize it in case of a bind while cutting and marked a guide line on the front.  I then cut away the full bevel using my bandsaw.




You may recall that the building's height was increased by joining two kits so when the beveled section was cut away it separated into two triangular shaped pieces.




Next I test fit the cuttings to the right side of the narrower wall.




Here you can see the full bevel ready to be attached to the wall.




This shows the beveled section of the wall where the cuttings will be attached.




On the wide wall, cutting away the bevel had left a flat edge that would show once the building was assembled.  I decided to cut shallow grooves into the edge of the wall to match the indented detail on the corner stones.  I made the grooves by touching the edge of the wall to the bandsaw blade, being carful not to cut deeply.




The the overall effect is convincing.




Turning back to the other wall, I used gel type super glue to attach the bevels.  They blended in nicely.




Here you can see the entire wall with the cut away bevels attached.




The stonework matched as designed but the very top portion of the cornice on the wide wall was damaged some time before I purchased the kit.




The beveled section was just slightly shorter than the main wall so I applied a small triangle of styrene to fill that gap and give me a backing to repair the cornice.




My next step will be to fill that void with squadron putty and file it down to match the cornice detail.  Fortunately only the very top bit had broken away.




So that is where things stand today.  Unfortunately I have to turn my attention to updating the resume and looking for a new source of modeling income (and those other annoying things like house notes and bills) so I'm not sure when I'll get back to it.  Hopefully the gap will be shorter this time.

Cheers!

[deemery]

I've never had much luck cutting straight lines with my small bandsaw.  But I'm pretty good with the table saw :-)


Your walls turned out great!



dave

[Random]

Thanks Dave.   

A table saw with a nice rip fence would make some of these projects easier but I only had room and cash for the band saw at the time and I felt the band saw would be more versatile.  Fortunately I'm pretty good at following a guide line as long as I go slowly.  Plus, these old resin walls are only mostly straight so as long as I'm close the seams are nothing a good downspout or bit of ivy can't cover.

I found a few minutes this evening and decided to get the squadron putty out and fill that broken cornice.  As luck would have it the squadron putty has given up the ghost.  Not to be deterred, I grabbed some thick styrene and some more gel super glue and filled it in with that. 



Who knows, this might be easier to file and blend anyway.   I'll know tomorrow.

Cheers.

[jerryrbeach]

Roger,


This looks really good.  Kudos for cutting that straight with a band saw!  FWIW, I much prefer Tamiya putty.  I find it shrinks less and lasts longer "on the shelf" than Squadron.


Good luck with the resume and corresponding search.

[ACL1504]

Roger,


This looks really good.  Kudos for cutting that straight with a band saw!  FWIW, I much prefer Tamiya putty.  I find it shrinks less and lasts longer "on the shelf" than Squadron.


Good luck with the resume and corresponding search.

Roger,

Never had the room for a band saw but like Dave, I've learned to cut a very straight edge with the small table saw. The band saw is still on my list of items to get down the road.

Also, I prefer the Tamiya putty over Squadron as well.

Been following along on this adventure and it is looking great.

Tom

[deemery]

You can make your own putty by dropping pieces of styrene into a bottle of liquid cement.  Try opening/ripping apart that tube of Squadron and dropping it into the cement.


dave

[Random]

My band saw is the small one that Micro-Mark sells.  I caught it a while back on a deep discount.  I find a band saw to be more versatile than the table saw for my needs.  For instance, it would have been difficult to add those shallow cuts to the end wall with the table saw.


So, I found unexpected shop time yesterday evening and managed to get a couple of things done.

The fill for the broken cornice turned out to be very good.  A couple of minutes with a flat file and the repair is done.




I also unboxed the 2nd hand cutting machine I was given over the holidays and took a shot at making the "Honey Bee" letters for the diner.

I designed the lettering in the quite limited design software that came with the machine (there are only 12 available fonts as I recall) and after several trial runs arrived at a result that seems good enough.  I ran two passes, first with the marker to make the black outline and then with the blade to cut out the letters.




The letters are well below the intended tolerance of the machine so it has a tendency to tear some of them.    You can see the inconsistency in the pen marking above as well as the cutting failures.  When you remove the paper the letters remain on the backing mat.  After teasing down the lifted corners on the remaining letters I went around the edges with a black permanent marker and touched up the black border. 




There should be enough good letters to make the signs.  Here is a set of previous test letters set in place roughly to check for size.  The font is not exactly right but I think its good enough.




Cheers!

[jrmueller]

Following along interesting project with lots of different techniques. Jim

[Random]

I managed a little time in the workshop each evening this week and have made some progress on the diner.

I glued the Honey Bee sign letters in place and added some other signs.  The advertising signs were printed on matte photo paper.  The paper I am using is Target's store brand and is 6.5 mil in thickness.  As a result is is fairly easy to cut into the edge of a sign with an x-acto knive and then peal the front and back sides apart leaving a very thin paper sign. 




I also added advertising signs to the shed and painted the Z brace on the doors red.




Here is the back side of the diner with similar signs applied.




I added glazing to the clearstory and the windows using the plastic sheet that came with the original kit.   The clearstory is blue while the main windows are clear.   I've never liked how flat plastic window glazing looks and I've finally found a method to resolve this issue.  I coat the entire surface of the plastic sheet with a thin layer of canopy glue and then carefully place it over the window opening from behind.




The canopy glue should fully fill the window.  You can always add a little more glue from the front and work it into place with a toothpick if there are any gaps in coverage.




The result is nice strong window glazing with that slightly wavy look of old glass.




Here you can see the blue glazing in the clearstory.  Next I added black tissue paper to the roof on the sides of the clearstory so that they match the center roof.  I also applied window shades using the same pastel paper used on the green American Tool & Die Company building.  The shades were actually made from left over scrap from the prior building.




I cut down the floor from the passenger car kit to use in the diner.  There are a large number of holes in the floor to facilitate installing underbody details.  As I am not installing any of those details I added a black card stock floor inside the casting. 




There are no end doors included in the original kit so a made fillers from some scrap scribed siding and painted them to match the diner.




I cut some scale 2x4s for the end doors.  If you don't already have a chopper, you need one.




The floor casting had a very slight bow to it so I glued it to the timber frame and left it under heavy weights overnight.




With everything installed I applied a light wash of India ink solution to take off the shine and bring out the individual siding boards.




And finally, I installed the end door fillers and cross boards.




Its getting close to completion now.

Cheers!